Old Fogy Part 4

He did not pattern after the three master-architects, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; gave no time to line, fascinated as he was by the problems of color. But color fades. Where are the Turners of yester-year? Form and form only endures, and so it has come to pa.s.s that of his four symphonies, not one is called great in the land where he was king for a day. The B-flat is a pretty suite, the C-major inutile--always barring the lyric episodes--the D-minor a thing of shreds and patches, and the _Rhenish_--muddy as the river Rhine in winter time.

The _E-flat piano Quintet_ will live and also the piano concerto--originally a fantasia in one movement. Thus Schumann experimented and built, following the line of easiest resistance, which is the poetic idea. If he had patterned as has Brahms, he would have sternly put aside his childish romanticism, left its unwholesome if captivating shadows, and pushed bravely into the open, where the sun and moon s.h.i.+ne without the blur and miasma of a _decadent_ literature. But then we should not have had Schumann. It was not to be, and thus it is that his is a name with a musical sigh, a name that evokes charming memories, and also, I must admit, a name that gently plucks at one's heart-strings. His songs are sweet, yet never so spontaneous as Schubert's, so astringently intellectual as Robert Franz's. His opera, his string quartets--how far are the latter from the n.o.ble, self-contained music in this form of Beethoven and Brahms!--and his choral compositions are already in the sad, gray _penumbra_ of the negligible. His piano music is without the clear, chiseled contours of Chopin, without a definite, a great style, yet--the piano music of Schumann, how lovely some of it is!

I will stop my heartless heart-to-heart talk. It is too depressing, these vagaries, these senile ramblings of a superannuated musician. Ah, me! I too was once in Arcady, where the shepherds bravely piped original and penetrating tunes, where the little shepherdesses danced to their lords and smiled sweet porcelain smiles. It was all very real, this music of the middle century, and it was written for the time, it suited the time, and when the time pa.s.sed, the music with the men grew stale, sour, and something to be avoided, like the leer of a creaking, senescent _beau_, like the rouge and grimace of a debile _coquette_. My advice then is, enjoy the music of your epoch, for there is no such thing as music of the future. It is always music of the present.

Schumann has had his day, Wagner is having his, and Brahms will be ruler of all tomorrow. _Eheu Fugaces!_

There was a time, _mes enfants_, when I played at all the Schumann piano music. The _Abegg_ variations, the _Papillons_, the _Intermezzi_--"an extension of the _Papillons_," said Schumann--_Die Davidsbundler_, that wonderful _toccata in C_, the best double-note study in existence--because it is music first, technics afterward--the seldom attempted _Allegro, opus 8_, the _Carnaval_, tender and dazzling miniatures, the twelve settings of Paganini, much more musical than Liszt's, the _Impromptus_, a delicate compliment to his Clara. It is always Clara with this Robert, like that other Robert, the strong-souled English husband of Elizabeth Browning. Schumann's whole life romance centered in his wife. A man in love with his wife and that man a musician! Why, the entire episode must seem abnormal to the flighty, capricious younger set, the Bayreuth set, for example. But it was an ideal union, the woman a sympathetic artist, the composer writing for her, writing songs, piano music, even criticism for and about her.

Decidedly one of the prettiest and most wholesome pictures in the history of any art.

Then I attacked the _F-sharp Minor Sonata_, with its wondrous introduction like the vast, somber portals to some fantastic Gothic pile. The _Fantasiestucke opus 12_, still remain Schumann at his happiest, and easiest comprehended. The _Symphonic Variations_ are the greatest of all, greater than the _Concerto_ or the _Fantasie in C_.

These almost persuade one that their author is a fit companion for Beethoven and Chopin. There is invention, workmans.h.i.+p, and a solidity that never for a moment clashes with the tide of romantic pa.s.sion surging beneath. Here he strikes fire and the blaze is glorious.

The _F-minor Sonata_--the so-called _Concert sans orchestre_--a truncated, unequal though interesting work; the _Arabesque_, the _Blumenstuck_, the marvelous and too seldom played _Humoreske_, opus 20, every one throbbing with feeling; the eight _Novelletten_, almost, but not quite successful attempts at a new form; the genial but unsatisfactory _G-minor Sonata_, the _Nachtstucke_, and the _Vienna Carnaval_, opus 26, are not all of these the unpremeditated outpourings of a genuine poet, a poet of sensibility, of exquisite feeling?

I must not forget those idylls of childhood, the _Kinderscenen_, the half-crazy _Kreisleriana_, true soul-states, nor the _Fantasie, opus 17_, which lacks a movement to make it an organic whole. Consider the little pieces, like the three romances, opus 28, the opus 32, the _Alb.u.m for the Young, opus 68_, the four fugues, four marches, the _Waldscenen_--Oh, never-to-be-forgotten _Vogel als Prophet_ and _Trock'ne Blumen_--the _Concertstuck, opus 92_, the second _Alb.u.m for the Young_, the _Three Fantasy Pieces, opus 111_, the _Bunte Blatter_--do you recall the one in F-sharp minor so miraculously varied by Brahms, or that appealing one in A-flat? The _Alb.u.mblatter, opus 124_, the seven pieces in fughetta form, the never-played _Concert allegro in D-minor, opus 134_, or the two posthumous works, the _Scherzo_ and the _Presto Pa.s.sionata_.

Have I forgotten any? No doubt. I am growing weary, weary of all this music, opiate music, prismatic music, "dreary music"--as Schumann himself called his early stuff--and the somber peristaltic music of his "lonesome, latter years." Schumann is now for the very young, for the self-illuded. We care more--being st.u.r.dy realists--for architecture today. These crepuscular visions, these adventures of the timid soul on sad white nights, these soft croonings of love and sentiment are out of joint with the days of electricity and the wors.h.i.+p of the golden calf.

Do not ask yourself with cynical airs if Schumann is not, after all, second-rate, but rather, when you are in the mood, enter his house of dreams, his home beautiful, and rest your nerves. Robert Schumann may not sip ambrosial nectar with the G.o.ds in highest Valhall, but he served his generation; above all, he made happy one n.o.ble woman. When his music is shelved and forgotten, the name of the Schumanns will stand for that rarest of blessings, conjugal felicity.

XII

"WHEN I PLAYED FOR LISZT"

To write from Bayreuth in the spring-time as Wagner sleeps calmly in the backyard of _Wahnfried_, without a hint of his music in the air, is giving me one of the deepest satisfactions of my existence. How came you in Bayreuth, and, of all seasons in the year, the spring? The answer may astonish you; indeed, I am astonished myself when I think of it. Liszt, Franz Liszt, greatest of pianists--after Thalberg--greatest of modern composers--after no one--Liszt lies out here in the cemetery on the Erlangerstra.s.se, and to visit that forlorn paG.o.da designed by his grandson Siegfried Wagner, I left my comfortable lodgings in Munich and traveled an entire day.

Now let me whisper something in your ear--I once studied with Liszt at Weimar! Does this seem incredible to you? An adorer of Thalberg, nevertheless, once upon a time I pulled up stakes at Paris and went to the abode of Liszt and played for him exactly once. This was a half-century ago. I carried letters from a well-known Parisian music publisher, Liszt's own, and was therefore accorded a hearing. Well do I recall the day, a bright one in April. His Serene Highness was at that time living on the Altenberg, and to see him I was forced to as much patience and diplomacy as would have gained me admittance to a royal household.

_Endlich_, the fatal moment arrived. Surrounded by a band of disciples, crazy fellows all--I discovered among the rest the little figure of Karl Tausig--the great man entered the _saal_ where I tremblingly sat. He was very amiable. He read the letters I timidly presented him, and then, slapping me on the back with an expression of _bonhomie_, he cried aloud in French: "_Tiens!_ let us hear what this admirer of my old friend Thalberg has to say for himself on the keyboard!" I did not miss the veiled irony of the speech, the word _friend_ being ever so lightly underlined; I knew of the famous Liszt-Thalberg _duello_, during which so much music and ink had been spilt.

But my agony! The _via dolorosa_ I traversed from my chair to the piano!

Since then the modern school of painter-impressionists has come into fas.h.i.+on. I understand perfectly the mental, may I say the optical, att.i.tude of these artists to landscape subjects. They must gaze upon a tree, a house, a cow, with their nerves at highest tension until everything quivers; the sky is bathed in magnetic rays, the background trembles as it does in life. So to me was the lofty chamber wherein I stood on that fateful afternoon. Liszt, with his powerful profile, the profile of an Indian chieftain, lounged in the window embrasure, the light streaking his hair, gray and brown, and silhouetting his brow, nose, and projecting chin. He alone was the illuminated focus of this picture which, after a half-century, is brilliantly burnt into my memory. His pupils were mere wraiths floating in a misty dream, with malicious white points of light for eyes. And I felt like a disembodied being in this spectral atmosphere.

Yet urged by an hypnotic will I went to the piano, lifted the fall-board, and in my misery I actually paused to read the maker's name.

A whisper, a smothered chuckle, and a voice uttering these words: "He must have begun as a piano-salesman," further disconcerted me. I fell on to the seat and dropped my fingers upon the keys. Facing me was the Ary Scheffer portrait of Chopin, and without knowing why I began the weaving Prelude in D-major. My insides shook like a bowl of jelly; yet I was outwardly as calm as the growing gra.s.s. My hands did not falter and the music seemed to ooze from my wrists. I had not studied in vain Thalberg's _Art of Singing on the Piano_. I finished. There was a murmur; nothing more.

Then Liszt's voice cut the air:

"I expected Thalberg's tremolo study," he said. I took the hint and arose.

He permitted me to kiss his hand, and, without stopping for my hat and walking-stick in the antechamber, I went away to my lodgings. Later I sent a servant for the forgotten articles, and the evening saw me in a diligence miles from Weimar. But I had played for Liszt!

Now, the moral of all this is that my testimony furthermore adds to the growing mystery of Franz Liszt. He heard hundreds of such pianists of my caliber, and, while he never committed himself--for he was usually too kind-hearted to wound mediocrity with cruel criticism, yet he seldom spoke the unique word except to such men as Rubinstein, Tausig, Joseffy, d'Albert, Rosenthal, or von Bulow. A miraculous sort of a man, Liszt was ever pouring himself out upon the world, body, soul, brains, art, purse--all were at the service of his fellow-beings. That he was imposed upon is a matter of course; that he never did an unkind act in his life proves him to have been Cardinal Newman's definition of a gentleman: "One who never inflicts pain." And only now is the real significance of the man as a composer beginning to be revealed. Like a comet he swept the heavens of his early youth. He was a marvelous virtuoso who mistook the piano for an orchestra and often confounded the orchestra with the piano. As a pianist pure and simple I prefer Sigismund Thalberg; but, as a composer, as a man, an extraordinary personality, Liszt quite filled my firmament.

Setting aside those operatic arrangements and those clever, noisy Hungarian Rhapsodies, what a wealth of piano-music has not this man disclosed to us. Calmly read the thematic catalog of Breitkopf and Hartel and you will be amazed at its variety. Liszt has paraphrased inimitably songs by Schubert, Schumann, and Robert Franz, in which the perfumed flower of the composer's thoughts is never smothered by pa.s.sage-work. Consider the delicious etude _Au bord d'une Source_, or the _Sonnets After Petrarch_, or those beautiful concert-studies in D-flat, F-minor, and A-flat; are they not models of genuine piano-music!

The settings of Schubert marches Hanslick declared are marvels; and the _Transcendental Studies!_ Are not keyboard limitations compa.s.sed?

Chopin, a sick man physically, never dared as did Liszt. One was an aeolian-harp, the other a hurricane. I never attempted to play these studies in their revised form; I content myself with the first sketches published as an opus 1. There the nucleus of each etude may be seen.

Later Liszt expanded the _croquis_ into elaborate frescoes. And yet they say that he had no thematic invention!

Take up his B-minor sonata. Despite its length, an unheavenly length, it is one of the great works of piano-literature fit to rank with Beethoven's most sublime sonatas. It is epical. Have you heard Friedheim or Burmeister play it? I had hoped that Liszt would vouchsafe me a performance, but you have seen that I had not the courage to return to him. Besides, I wasn't invited. Once in Paris a Liszt pupil, George Leitert, played for me the _Dante Sonata_, a composition I heard thirty years later from the fingers of Arthur Friedheim. It is the _Divine Comedy_ compressed within the limits of a piano-piece. What folly, I hear some one say! Not at all. In several of Chopin's Preludes--his supreme music--I have caught reflections of the sun, the moon, and the starry beams that one glimpses in lonely midnight pools. If Chopin could mirror the cosmos in twenty bars, why should not a greater tone-poet imprison behind the bars of his music the subtle soul of Dante?

To view the range, the universality of Liszt's genius, it is only necessary to play such a tiny piano-composition, _Eclogue_, from _Les Annees de Pelerinage_ and then hear his _Faust Symphony_, his _Dante Symphony_, his Symphonic Poems. There's a man for you! as Abraham Lincoln once said of Walt Whitman. After carefully listening to the _Faust Symphony_ it dawns on you that you have heard all this music elsewhere, filed out, triturated, cut into handy, digestible fragments; in a word, dressed up for operatic consumption, popularized. Yes, Richard Wagner dipped his greedy fingers into Liszt's scores as well as into his purse. He borrowed from the pure Rhinegold h.o.a.rd of the Hungarian's genius, and forgot to credit the original. In music there are no quotation marks. That is the reason borrowing has been in vogue from Handel down.

The _Ring of the Nibelungs_ would not be heard today if Liszt had not written its theme in his _Faust Symphony_. _Parsifal_ is altogether Lisztian, and a German writer on musical esthetics has pointed out recently, theme for theme, resemblance for resemblance, in this Liszt-Wagner _Verhaltniss_. Wagner owed everything to Liszt--from money to his wife, success, and art. A wonderful white soul was Franz Liszt.

And he is only coming into his kingdom as a composer. Poor, petty, narrow-minded humanity could not realize that because a man was a pianist among pianists, he might be a composer among composers. I made the error myself. I, too, thought that the velvet touch of Thalberg was more admirable than the mailed warrior fist of Liszt. It is a mistake.

And now, plumped on my knees in Liszt's Bayreuth tomb, I acknowledge my faults. Yes, he was a greater pianist than Thalberg. Can an old-fas.h.i.+oned fellow say more?

XIII

WAGNER OPERA IN NEW YORK

With genuine joy I sit once more in my old arm-chair and watch the brawling Wissahickon Creek, its banks draped with snow, while overhead the sky seems so friendly and blue. I am at Dussek Villa, I am at home; and I reproach myself for having been such a fool as ever to wander from it. Being a fussy but conscientious old bachelor, I scold myself when I am in the wrong, thus making up for the clattering tongue of an active wife. As I once related to you, I recently went to New York, and there encountered sundry adventures, not all of them of a diverting nature.

One you know, and it reeks in my memory with stale cigars, witless talk, and all the other monotonous symbols of Bohemia. Ah, that blessed Bohemia, whose coast no man ever explored except gentle Will Shakespeare! It is no-man's-land; never was and never will be. Its misty, alluring signals have s.h.i.+pwrecked many an artistic mariner, and--but pshaw! I'm too old to moralize this way. Only young people moralize. It is their prerogative. When they live, when they fathom good and evil and their mysteries, charity will check their tongues, so I shall say no more of Bohemia. What I saw of it further convinced me of its undesirability, of its inutility.

And now to my tale, now to finish forever the story of my experiences in Gotham! I declaimed violently against Tchaikovsky to my acquaintances of the hour, because my dislike to him is deep rooted; but I had still to encounter another modern musician, who sent me home with a headache, with nerves all jangling, a stomach soured, and my whole esthetic system topsy-turveyed and sorely wrenched. I heard for the first time Richard Wagner's _Die Walkure_, and I've been sick ever since.

I felt, with Louis Ehlert, that another such a performance would release my feeble spirit from its fleshly vestment and send it soaring to the angels, for surely all my sins would be wiped out, expiated, by the severe penance endured.

Not feeling quite myself the day after my experiences with the music journalists, I strolled up Broadway, and, pa.s.sing the opera-house, inspected the _menu_ for the evening. I read, "_Die Walkure_, with a grand cast," and I fell to wondering what the word _Walkure_ meant. I have an old-fas.h.i.+oned acquaintance with German, but never read a line or heard a word of Wagner's. Oh, yes; I forget the overture to _Rienzi_, which always struck me as noisy and quite in Meyerbeer's most vicious manner. But the Richard Wagner, the later Wagner, I read so much about in the newspapers, I knew nothing of. I do now. I wish I didn't.

Says I to myself, "Here's a chance to hear this Walkover opera. So now or never." I went in, and, planking my dollar down, I said, "Give me the best seat you have." "Other box-office, on 40th Street, please, for gallery." I was taken aback. "What!" I exclaimed, "do you ask a whole dollar for a gallery seat? How much, pray, for one down-stairs?" The young man looked at me curiously, but politely replied, "Five dollars, and they are all sold out." I went outside and took off my hat to cool my head. Five good dollars--a whole week's living and more--to listen to a Wagner opera! Whew! It must be mighty good music. Why I never paid more than twenty-five cents to hear Mozart's _Magic Flute_, and with Carlotta, Patti, Karl Formes, and--but what's the use of reminiscences?

I could not make up my mind to spend so much money and I walked to Central Park, took several turns, and then came down town again. My mind was made up. I went boldly to the box-office and encountered the same young man. "Look here, my friend," I said, "I didn't ask you for a private box, but just a plain seat, one seat." "Sold out," he laconically replied and retired. Then I heard suspicious laughter.

Rather dazed, I walked slowly to the sidewalk and was grabbed--there is no other word--by several rough men with tickets and big bunches of greenbacks in their grimy fists. "Tickets, tickets, fine seats for _De Volkyure_ tonight." They yelled at me and I felt as if I were in the clutches of the "barkers" of a downtown clothing-house. I saw my chance and began d.i.c.kering. At first I was asked fifteen dollars a seat, but seeing that I am apoplectic by temperament they came down to ten. I asked why this enormous tariff and was told that Van Dyck, Barnes, Nordica, Van Rooy, and heaven knows who besides, were in the cast. That settled it. I bargained and wrangled and finally escaped with a seat in the orchestra for seven dollars! Later I discovered it was not only in the orchestra, but quite near the orchestra, and on the bra.s.s and big drum side.

When I reached the opera-house after my plain supper of ham and eggs and tea it must have been seven o'clock. I was told to be early and I was.

No one else was except the ticket speculators, who, recognizing me, gave me another hard fight until I finally called a policeman. He smiled and told me to walk around the block until half-past seven, when the doors opened. But I was too smart and found my way back and everything open at 7.15, and my seat occupied by an overcoat. I threw it into the orchestra and later there was a fine row when the owner returned. I tried to explain, but the man was mad, and I advised him to go to his last home.

Why even the ushers laughed. At 7.45 there were a few dressed up folks down stairs, and they mostly stared at me, for I kept my fur cap on to heat my head, and my suit, the best one I have, is a good, solid pepper-and-salt one. I didn't mind it in the least, but what worried me was the libretto which I tried to glance through before the curtain rose. In vain. The story would not come clear, although I saw I was in trouble when I read that the hero and heroine were brother and sister.

Experience has taught me that family rows are the worst, and I wondered why Wagner chose such a dull, old-fas.h.i.+oned theme.

The orchestra began to fill up and there was much chattering and noise.

Then a little fellow with beard and eyegla.s.ses hopped into the conductor's chair, the lights were turned off, and with a roar like a storm the overture began. I tried to feel thrilled, but couldn't. I had expected a new art, a new orchestration, but here I was on familiar ground, so familiar that presently I found myself wondering why Wagner had orchestrated the beginning of Schubert's _Erlking_. The noise began in earnest and by the light from a player's lamp I saw that the prelude was intended for a storm. "Ha!" I said, "then it was the _Erlking_ after all." The curtain rose on an empty stage with a big tree in the middle and a fire burning on the hearth.

There was no pause in the music at the end of the overture--did it really end?--which I thought funny. Then a man with big whiskers, wearing the skin of an animal, staggered in and fell before the fire. He seemed tired out and the music had a tired feeling too. A woman dressed in white entered and after staring for twenty bars got him a drink in a ram's horn. The music kept right on as if it were a symphony and not an opera. The yelling from the pair was awful, at least so it seemed to me.

It appears that they were having family troubles and didn't know their own names. Then the orchestra began stamping and knocking, and a fellow with hawk wings in his helmet, a spear and a beard entered, and some one next to me said "There's the Hunding motive." Now I know my German, but I saw no dog, besides, what motive could the animal have had. The three people, a savage crew, sat down and talked to music, just plain talk, for I didn't hear a solitary tune. The girl went to bed and the man followed. The tenor had a long scene alone and the girl came back. They must have found out their names, for they embraced and after pulling an old sword out of the tree, they said a lot and went away. I was glad they had patched up the family trouble, but what became of the big, black-bearded fellow with the hawk wings in his helmet?

The next act upset me terribly. I read my book, but couldn't make out why, if _Wotan_ was the G.o.d of all and high much-a-muck, he didn't smash all his enemies, especially that cranky old woman of his, _Fricka_? What a pretty name! I got quite excited when Nordica sang a yelling sort of a scream high up on the rocks. Not at the music, however, but I expected her to fall over and break her neck. She didn't, and shouting Wagner's music at that. Why it would twist the neck of a giraffe! Quite at sea, I saw the brother and sister come in and violently quarrel, and Nordica return and sing a slumber song, for the sister slept and the brother looked cross. Then more gloom and a duel up in the clouds, and once more the curtain fell. I heard the celebrated _Ride of the Valkyries_ and wondered if it was music or just a stable full of crazy colts neighing for oats. Dean Swift's Gulliver would have said the latter. I thought so. The howling of the circus girls up on the rocks paralyzed my faculties.

It was a hideous saturnalia, and deafened by the bra.s.s and percussion instruments I tried to get away, but my neighbors protested and I was forced to sit and suffer. What followed was incomprehensible. The crazy amazons, the Walk-your-horses, and the disagreeable _Wotan_ kept things in a perfect uproar for half an hour. Then the stage cleared and the father, after lecturing his daughter, put her to sleep under a tree. He must have been a mesmerist. Red fire ran over the stage, steam hissed, the orchestra rattled, and the ba.s.s roared. Finally, to tinkling bells and fourth of July fireworks, the curtain fell on the silliest pantomime I ever saw.

The music? Ah, don't ask me now! Wait until my nerves get settled. It never stopped, and fast as it reeled off I recognized Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Weber--lots of Weber--Marschner, and Chopin. Yes, Chopin! The orchestration seemed overwrought and coa.r.s.e and the form--well, formlessness is the only word to describe it. There was an infernal sort of skill in the instrumentation at times, a short-breathed juggling with other men's ideas, but no development, no final cadence.

Everything in suspension until my ears fairly longed for one perfect resolution. Even in the _Spring Song_ it does not occur. That tune is suspiciously Italian, for all Wagner's dislike of Italy.